Jony Ive–the man behind the iMac, the iPhone, and the iPad hardware–will be taking a brand new role as head of human interface design alongside his existing role as leader of industrial design. He will run hardware and software. Apparently, after hinting to The Telegraph earlier this year that he was upset with the skeuomorphic designs of Apple’s software, Ive made a powerplay within the company.

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It’s particularly relevant for Apple when you consider what looks to be a pretty inevitable future, a world where desktop software and mobile software seamlessly complement each other. The style is minimal. Buttons may not even exist. Control by touch, mouse, voice, gesture–it makes no matter. All that’s important is the information you wield as naturally as possible wherever you want to see it.

This might be one of the biggest (and most positive) changes Apple has ever made. Expect Jony to put a stamp on Apple far beyond his previous influence.

Doodler

This position is based in Mountain View, CA.

The area: Product

One of the many reasons Google consistently brings innovative, world-changing products to market is because of the collaborative work we do in Product Management. With eyes focused squarely on the future, our team works closely with creative and prolific engineers to help design and develop technologies that improve access to the world’s information. We’re responsible for guiding products throughout the execution cycle, focusing specifically on analyzing, positioning, packaging, promoting and tailoring our solutions to all the markets where Google does business.

The role: Doodler

As a Doodler, you will join the small creative team responsible for the Google homepage logos (google.com/doodles) that surprise and delight hundreds of millions of users worldwide. You will work at the intersection of art and technology individually and collaboratively with artists, engineers, and other Googlers to lead the creative vision for high impact illustrations, animations, games, and more.

Social media shouldn’t be a substitute for interaction with, you know, real people around you. One of the good things about social media is you can keep tabs on friends around the world (one of the groups I’m a part of has a 24 hour interaction cycle), but we forget how it’s important to shop local, meet local and have physical interaction.

I’m guilty of it, outside of being in a walkable neighborhood. But I make it a point to have drinks, brunch and other interactions with friends that are local, and explore where I live.

I believe we have a problem. A lot of the people I know or meet have substituted online community for neighborhood community.

We chat to our ‘friends’ on Facebook but we don’t know the people next door.

We read Tweets from someone we’ve never met, but can’t remember the last time we chatted to the family across the street.

We frantically clear our inbox but fail to sit on our porch so we have can have serendipitous chats with people walking by

Knowing and relying on your physical neighbors is essential to a healthy and happy life.

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We’ve all got to choose our local communities and invest in building them. When we die, we won’t wish we had a few more friends on Facebook, but we all will wish we shared a few more laughs with our neighbors over a beer or coffee.

Prototype. Test. Prototype. Test. Our team spent hours debating user needs and hypothetical solutions. Testing a quick prototype, whether it is click-through wireframes or a quick build, with real users (who are not part of the team) helped us make decisions faster.

Play out the interaction models. We tried out a few navigation models. Tabs? Side-bar? Dashboard? We sketched out each model, pinned them up, and discussed which one was the best for the Ridejoy experience. We had to play out the scenarios fully to truly understand how they would work.

You just gotta ship. As a designer who wants to perfect the details, I had a hard time with this. I don’t know if people are going to understand how to autopilot their offers. I think we can improve our “no upcoming rides” screen. The feeling of wanting to fix “one more thing” will always be there so recognizing that and shipping anyway is an important thing to do.